Wednesday 10 December 2008

Frontier or Con-tier?

Frontier.ac.uk is a gap year holiday company who say that they offer well-organised, high quality volunteering opportunities for people who want to do something useful in their year off.

My daughter went on one of their projects and it was incredibly badly done. It was so bad that frontier.ac.uk cancelled the project whilst she was still on it. The arrangments in the accommodation she found herself living in were wholly inappropriate, and ultimately put her, as they say, in moral and physical danger. The accommodation arrangments bore absolutely no resemblance to the description that frontier.ac.uk (how on earth did they get the .ac.uk domain?) had on its website.

Forced to leave early, after my daughter returned to the uk, she made a complaint about her experience, as did her parents. Frontier.ac.uk, despite having cancelled the project, have responded by saying that she had absolutely no justification for any complaint, and have refused outright to return any part of the fee that they were paid to provide the placement.

I've started this blog to record our experiences of frontier.ac.uk's service, and to invite others to contribute theirs. 

Add your comments below, and email me if you want to tell a bigger story.

I'll be expanding this piece later, and illustrating what I say here more fully. 

If you are contemplating taking a trip with frontier.ac.uk then I would advise the following:
  • Do not be impressed by their website - we have it in writing from them that they cannot keep it updated, and that it includes dead or non-existent projects; presumably to fatten up the marketting message.
  • Be extremely cautious if you are a young woman, or parents of a young woman, who is thinking of joining a frontier project, and ask a great many questions about the nature, appropriateness and safety of the accomodation arrangments described on their website.
Meanwhile check out 

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